Babbitt is a novel
that satirizes the business, social, religious,
and family culture of middle-class
Americans in the early 1920's. Harcourt, Brace,
& Co. published it
in 1922.

Settings

The action begins in April
1920 and takes place in (1) the fictional city
of Zenith, population 362,000,
in the American Midwest; (2) the fictional
Zenith suburb of Floral Heights,
where George Babbitt and his family live; (3)
Monarch, a city where Babbitt
attends a convention; (4) Catawba, a village
where Babbitt was born and
where his mother still lives; (5) New York City,
where Babbitt and his
best friend, Paul Riesling, spend a few hours
before changing trains on
a train trip to Maine; (6) Katadumcook and Lake
Sunasquam in Maine, where
Babbitt and Riesling spend a vacation; (7)
Chicago, where Babbitt goes
on business trips; (8) Akron, Ohio, where
Babbitt sends a postcard on a
train stop while he is returning to Zenith from
a Chicago trip.

Characters

George Folansbee Babbitt:
Forty-six-year-old real-estate broker who is a
member of the inner circle
of the local business and social establishment,
conforming to prevailing
values and standards. Originally from the
village of Catawba, which he
looks down on, Babbitt lives in prosperous
Floral Heights, a suburb of
the big city of Zenith. In Zenith and Floral
Heights, he belongs to the
right clubs, supports the right politicians,
cultivates the right acquaintances
and business clients, and plays the right
games—bridge and golf. However,
he begins to believe that something is missing
from his life. Author Lewis
describes Babbitt this way: "His large head was
pink, his brown hair thin
and dry. His face was babyish in slumber,
despite his wrinkles and the
red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose.
He was not fat but he was
exceedingly well fed. . . ." Myra
Babbitt: George
Babbitt’s loyal, easygoing wife. She is
plain-looking and unremarkable. Verona,
Ted: Babbitt’s
older children. Their ideas and their
independent spirit irk their father. Katherine
(Tinka):
Babbitt’s ten-year-old daughter. He dotes on
her. Paul
Riesling: Babbitt’s
best friend. Although he could have been a
violinist, he ended up joining
his father in the manufacture and sale of
roofing materials. Like Babbitt,
he is not quite satisfied with his life. Zilla
Riesling: Paul
Riesling’s nagging wife. When she criticizes
Paul in the presence of Babbitt
and his wife, it appears that she at least has
the courage to assert herself.
However, when Babbitt sharply scolds her in
defense of Paul, she breaks
down. Tanis
Judique: Client
of Babbitt with whom he has an affair. Vergil
Gunch: Influential
acquaintance of Babbitt. Gunch, a coal dealer
and president of the Boosters’
Club, turns a cold shoulder toward Babbitt after
the latter begins espousing
causes unacceptable to the power structure.
However, after Babbitt casts
off his radical ideas, Gunch invites him to join
the Good Citizens’ League.Theresa
McGoun: Babbitt’s
stenographer.Babbitt’s
Mother:
Gentle, kindly woman whose “Christian patience”
irks her son.Lucas
Prout: Successful
mayoral candidate supported by Babbitt. Seneca
Doane: Liberal
politician whom Babbitt opposes in the mayoral
election. Doane’s views
later cause Babbitt to espouse radical views and
support striking workers—until
Babbitt’s old cronies bring him back into the
conformist fold by ignoring
or threatening him. Kenneth
Escott: Verona
Babbitt’s fiancé. Like Verona, he
espouses many ideas that go counter
to the thinking of the older generation.Henry
Thompson: Babbitt's
father-in-law and business partner. Eunice
Littlefield:
Ted Babbitt's girlfriend.Howard
Littlefield:
Babbitt's next-door neighbor who holds a PhD in
economics. He is the
father of Eunice.Colonel
Rutherford Snow:
Owner of a local newspaper. He is among the
businessmen who threaten retaliation
against Babbitt after the latter begins his
brief fling with liberalism. Salesmen
and Staff of
Babbitt’s Office Various
Other Zenith
BusinessmenVarious
Neighbors and
Clients of Babbit

Narrative
Point of View

Babbitt is written
in the third-person point of view with the
author assuming the persona
of an omniscient (all-knowing) narrator—that is,
a narrator who is able
to report the thoughts of characters as well as
their actions, no matter
where the characters are, what they are doing,
or whether they are alone
or with others. However, the third-person
omniscient narrator does not
take part in the action.

George
Folansbee Babbitt, 46, has carved out a nice piece of
the American dream
for himself: He has a good job, an attractive house,
and a loyal wife and
three children. Moreover, he enjoys respect as a
member of the local establishment,
for he knows the right people, belongs to the right
clubs, and supports
the right causes. But he is not quite happy, not quite
content. Something
is missing from his life.
Babbitt
lives in a green-and-white Dutch colonial home on
Chatham Road in Floral
Heights, a suburb of the bustling metropolis of
Zenith. The home has all
the latest appliances, symbols of his success. Even
the alarm clock is
state of the art: It has a cathedral chime and
glow-in-the-dark dial. But
on one typical day in April 1920, it is the rumble of
the milk truck that
awakens him from his recurring dream about a fairy
girl who beckons him
to a dark hillside. He tries to go back to sleep, but
other sounds of the
morning—a barking dog, the Advocate-Times
thumping against the front
door, a neighbor cranking up a Ford, and finally the
alarm clock going
off—keep him awake.
"Time
to get up, Georgie boy," says his plump wife,
Myra.
Babbitt
begins preparing himself for another day. In the
bathroom, he’s annoyed
that his daughter, Verona, has left behind the
offensive smell of her toothpaste.
And no one has left him a dry bath towel. It seems he
is the only one in
the house who has consideration for others.
While
dressing, Babbitt notices that the pants of his brown
suit are wrinkled.
When his wife, Myra, suggests that he wear his pressed
blue trousers with
the brown coat, Babbitt says,
"Good
Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to
wear the coat of one
suit and the pants of another? What do you think
I am? A busted bookkeeper?"
He
ends up wearing a gray suit. It is well tailored but
plain, a standard
suit. Then he puts on his standard black boots and
transfers paraphernalia
from the pockets of the brown suit—including his
fountain pen, silver pencil,
and key chain holding a penknife, cigar cutter, and
Elks Club emblem—to
the pockets of the gray suit. Next, he pins on his
Boosters’ Club button
imprinted with “Boosters—Pep!”

Gunch
for Lunch and the Tux Tiff

Babbitt
and his wife talk about his diet—she does not serve
enough prunes—and about
having Vergil Gunch and his wife over for dinner the
following week. Gunch
is a coal dealer and president of the Boosters’ Club.
She then suggests
that he wear his dinner jacket for that and other
occasions but cautions
him not to call it a “tux.” He tells her she is
becoming just as fussy
as Verona.
Verona,
who recently graduated from Bryn Mawr College, can’t
make up her mind what
to do. One moment she wants to marry a millionaire and
live in Europe,
and the next she wants to “stay right here in Zenith
and be some blooming
kind of a socialist agitator or boss charity-worker or
some damn thing!”For
the time being, she has been working as a file clerk
at the Gruensberg
Leather Company.
His
17-year-old son Ted—Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt—is just
as bad, he says.
One day he says that when he gets out of East Side
High School he will
go to college. The next day he doesn’t want to go to
college. The only
one in the household who doesn’t irritate Babbitt is
his 10-year-old daughter,
Katherine, whom the family calls Tinka.
Babbitt
eats breakfast, cranks up his car, drives the three
miles to work, and
enters the Reeves Building, where he has an office on
the ground floor.
And so another day begins for George Babbitt—another
day of wearing standard
clothes, eating standard food, and conforming to the
standard ideas of
a standard society in a standard city.
But
something is eating at Babbitt. He’s no longer
satisfied with his daily
routine. His best friend, Paul Riesling, is also
dissatisfied. Paul was
George’s roommate at the state university, and they
have been bosom pals
since that time. They golf together, take car trips on
Sundays, and share
intimate business and family news. Paul could have
been a professional
violinist—or maybe even a painter or writer—but
instead went into business
with his father making and selling roofing material.
After
a morning of writing letters and advertisements,
Babbitt goes out for lunch
with Riesling at the Zenith Athletic Club—an in spot
for its 3,000 members—after
giving instructions to his stenographer, Miss McGoun,
on how to run the
office during the hour-and-a-half he will be gone.
Babbitt opens his conversation
with Riesling by saying he just closed a lucrative
real-estate deal. But
despite that, he says, he’s been a bit “down in the
mouth all day long."
Riesling
commiserates with him, saying, “I ought to have been a
fiddler, and I’m
a pedlar of tar-roofing.” He also complains about his
nagging wife, Zilla,
who is “so rotten bad-tempered that the cook has
quit.” He then suggests
that he and Babbitt take a vacation in Maine by
themselves so they can
“smoke and cuss and be natural.”
The Maine Vacation

Babbitt
goes for the idea, and they take the trip in the
spring of the next year.
The vacation seems to rejuvenate Riesling, and he even
begins to think
he and Zilla can work out their differences. Although
Babbitt enjoys casting
his fishing pole and living in the wilds, he can’t
quite shake his restlessness
and disquietude. However, both men go home with the
expectation that things
will be better. Of course, when they return,
their old monotonous
life is still there; it hasn’t gone away. Babbitt
plunges into it anyway.
He gives a rousing speech at a real-estate convention,
helps the establishment-approved
candidate—Lucas Prout, a manufacturer of
mattresses—win the mayoral election,
becomes active in boosting the Chatham Road
Presbyterian Sunday School,
gets himself elected vice president of the local
chapter of the Boosters’
Club, and continues to shine in the real-estate
business. It seems there’s
no stopping him. All is well with George F. Babbitt.
Meanwhile,
Verona rises to the job of secretary to Mr. Gruensberg
while taking up
with Kenneth Escott, a reporter for the Advocate-Times.
Although
Verona's and Escott's jobs are conventional and
respectable, their conversations
center on radical ideas, and their social activities
consist mainly of
attending lectures by radical authors and
philosophers. However, they themselves
do not become involved in radical movements.
As
for Ted, he gets chummy with an annoying but pretty
little thing from next
Door, Eunice Littlefield, the daughter of Howard
Littlefield, Ph.D., manager
of employment and publicity for the Zenith Street
Traction Company. When
Ted begs for a car but doesn't get one, he and three
friends tinker an
old Ford chassis into a hot rod, drive it for a while,
then sell it at
a profit. As a concession to Ted, Babbitt buys him a
motorcycle, and Ted
and Eunice go on outings every Saturday. One night,
when Ted holds a party
at the Babbitt home, he and Eunice and their friends
whoop it—and occasionally
go off to separate rooms or to cars to do
who-knows-what. Dr. Littlefield
comes in to see how things are going and is shocked to
see Ted and Eunice
dancing "like one body." He hauls her home. Afterward,
Babbitt smells whiskey
on Ted's breath and severely reprimands him.
Eventually, Ted decides to
go to college to study law, a decision he he had
considered while he accompanied
his father on a business trip to Chicago.
Paul
Shoots Zilla

One
day, Babbitt receives appalling news. His bosom buddy
Paul—after having
an affair with a widow—shoots his wife, Zilla, during
an argument. Zilla
lives, but Riesling gets three years in the state
penitentiary. This nasty
turn of events desolates Babbitt, for good old Paul is
no longer there
to commiserate with him. In time, Babbitt begins to
reassess his life.
One day, he runs into attorney Seneca Doane, the
losing candidate
in the mayoral election against Proust. Babbitt is
suddenly impressed with
Doane and his liberal ideas. Doane had attended
college with Babbitt and
recalls that George was something of a liberal
himself, one who espoused
the cause of the poor and the downtrodden.
“I've always aimed to be liberal,” Babbitt says. “Now,
I always believe
in giving the other fellow a chance, and listening to
his ideas.”
Seized
with zeal, Babbitt begins espousing liberal causes.
However, one of his
first manifestations of “liberality” is an affair with
Tanis Judique, an
attractive widow who rents an apartment in a Babbitt
building with a leaky
roof that she had asked him to repair. While romancing
her, he also begins
pushing “radical” causes and even takes the side of
strikers in a wave
of labor disputes involving telephone operators and
linemen, workers in
the dairy industry, truckers, and employees of the
Zenith Steel and Machinery
Company. There is violence, and the National Guard is
mobilized.
Members
of the local Good Citizens’ League—surgeon A. I.
Dilling, contractor Charles
McKelvey, and the owner of the local newspaper,
Colonel Rutherford Snow—confront
Babbitt and threaten retaliation unless he joins their
organization and
changes his ways. Babbitt refuses. On his way home
from work, he sees Vergil
Gunch on the street and waves to him. Gunch ignores
him. At home, his wife
urges him to join the Good Citizens’ League. If he
doesn’t, she says, “People
might criticize you.” The next morning on the way to
work, he greets the
august banker William Washington Eathorne, but
Eathorne just gives him
a contemptuous look.
In
Babbitt's office, his business partner and
father-in-law, Henry Thompson,
says, “If folks get an idea you're scatter-brained and
unstable, you don't
suppose they'll want to do business with you, do you?”
That
very afternoon Babbitt fails to make what should have
been an easy sale.
Later, the Street Traction Company takes its business
elsewhere. Then Miss
McGoun quits and takes a job with a competing
real-estate firm. Next, the
Chamber of Commerce does not ask him to speak at the
annual dinner, and
he is not invited to a big poker game that normally
would have included
him. Babbitt begins to imagine that people are
whispering about him. The
only ones who support the new George Babbitt, it
seems, are his children
Ted and Verona.
Judique
Not Unique
Meanwhile,
Tanis Judique turns out not to be the fanciful
creature he originally thought
she was. She certainly is not the fairy girl of his
dreams. At the same
time, he becomes closer to his wife after she
undergoes an operation to
remove an inflamed appendix. His attitude begins to
change—he becomes the
old George once again—and his friends and neighbors
notice. One day, when
Vergil Gunch invites him into the Good Citizens’
League, a warm feeling
flows through Babbitt, he slaps Gunch on the back, and
the next day he
joins the league.All
is well again. George F. Babbitt is once more a solid
citizen—a solid,
conforming, standard citizen.Meanwhile,
Verona marries Kenneth Escott, as expected. Then, one
day, Ted announces
to the family that he has dropped out of college and
married Eunice Littlefield
in secret. Everyone chastises him for this foolhardy
move at his young
age—everyone, that is, except Babbitt. Though he
failed to break out of
his conformist mold, Babbitt now realizes it would be
wrong to force his
son into the same mold. He tells Ted:

Well, maybe you'll carry
things on further. I don't know. But I do get a kind
of sneaking pleasure
out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do
and did it. Well, those
folks in there will try to bully you, and tame you
down. Tell 'em to go
to the devil! I'll back you. Take your factory
job, if you want to.
Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of
Zenith. Nor of yourself,
the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The
world is yours!

.Themes

Conformity

To rise in
the business and
social world of Zenith—and to maintain good
standing—a person must conform
to the standards established by the power structure.
Anyone who opposes
the power structure—anyone who dares to think
independently—becomes an
outcast, as Babbitt becomes for a brief time after
he espouses “radical”
causes. Thousands of years ago, the Greek
philosopher Socrates
devoted his life to challenging established ideas
and the power structure
that safeguarded them. Although his peers sentenced
him to death, they
could not halt the spread of his ideas. Today, the
world remembers Socrates
as one of the greatest thinkers in history, and his
ideas live on.

Power
of Peer Pressure

When
Babbitt conforms to
prevailing views in his community, he enjoys the
respect of the in crowd.
However, when he begins to think independently, his
peers snub him and
even sabotage his business. This pressure is too
much for Babbitt to withstand,
and he returns to the fold, stepping back inside his
old skin, his old
ideas, and his old way of life.

Status

Zenith, of
course, is an
English word meaning highest point or pinnacle. When
Babbitt is in his
office in Zenith, or among acquaintances at the
Zenith Athletic Club, he
believes he ranks with the most eminent men of his
society. To reinforce
his status, he acquires the latest home appliances
and gadgetry, cultivates
relationships with the most influential politicians,
joins the right organizations,
proudly wears his Boosters’ button, and becomes
active in church affairs.
After he has a change of heart and espouses causes
that the local power
structure opposes, his acquaintances anathematize
him. Fearing loss of
status, he quickly reverts back to his old ways.

Hypocrisy

Babbitt
and his cronies believe
they are pillars of the community who promote high
moral and ethical standards.
In reality, they are pragmatic, narrow-minded
citizens who play politics,
deceive business clients, oppress the working class,
womanize, and stifle
views that dissent from their own. The following
passage from Chapter IV,
Part IV, centers on this theme:

But Babbitt
was virtuous.
He advocated, though he did not practice, the
prohibition of alcohol; he
praised, though he did not obey, the laws against
motor-speeding; he paid
his debts; he contributed to the church, the Red
Cross, and the Y. M. C.
A.; he followed the custom of his clan and cheated
only as it was sanctified
by precedent; and he never descended to
trickery—though, as he explained
to Paul Riesling: "Course I don't mean to say that
every ad I write is
literally true or that I always believe everything I
say when I give some
buyer a good strong selling-spiel. You see—you see
it's like this:
In the first place, maybe the owner of the property
exaggerated when he
put it into my hands, and it certainly isn't my
place to go proving my
principal a liar!

Hope

Near the
end of the novel,
Ted shocks his family when he marries Eunice
Littlefield in secret after
dropping out of college to work in a factory.
Everyone, including the self-styled
rebel Verona, condemns his action—everyone, that is,
except George Babbitt.
He seems to realize that Ted did has developed
individuality, independence,
and the courage to pursue his own dreams—qualities
that George failed to
develop in himself.

Lewis
wrote his novels mostly in the tidy,
straightforward style he carried over
from his days as a newspaperman. One of the
hallmarks of his journalistic
style is active verbs that suggest movement and
sound. In the following
passages, the active verbs appear in blue type:

Over a
concrete bridge fled
a limousine of long sleek hood and noiselessengine.
. . . Below the bridge curved
a railroad,
a maze of greenand
crimson lights. The New York Flyerboomed
past, and twenty lines ofpolished
steel leaped
into the glare.

Through
the building crawled
thescrubwomen,
yawning,
their old shoes slapping.
The dawn
mist spun
away. Cuesof men with
lunch-boxes clumped
toward the immensity
of new factories.

The
furnace-man slammed
the basementdoor.
A dog barked
in the next yard.
As Babbitt sank
blissfully into a dimwarm
tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling,
and the rolled-up
Advocatethumped
the front door. Babbitt roused,
his stomach constricted
with alarm.

Lewis also
uses repetition,
coordinating words and phrases, and parallel structure
to write balanced,
rhythmic sentences and paragraphs. In the following
paragraph, repeated
words or phrases appear in red; phrases balanced
against one another appear
in black, underlined:

Just
as he was an Elk,
a Booster, and
a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just
as the priests
of the Presbyterian Church
determined his every religious belief and the
senators who controlled the
Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in
Washington what he should
think about disarmament, tariff, and
Germany, so did the
large national advertisers fix
the surface of his life, fix
what he believed to be his individuality. These
standard advertised wares—toothpastes,
socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water
heaters—were
his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the
signs, then the substitutes,
for joy and passion and wisdom.

In the
following passage, Lewis uses repetition mixed with
concrete figures of
speech. The repeated patterns are highlighted in
red. The figures of speech
are identified below the passage:

Zilla's
facewas
wrinkled like the
Medusa, her voicewas
a dagger of corroded brass. She was
full of the joy of righteousness and bad temper. Shewas
a crusader and, like every crusader, she exulted in
the opportunity to
be vicious in the name of virtue. "Let it go?

face
was wrinkled like
the Medusa: simile comparing Zilla to Medusa
(in Greek mythology, a
monstrous, ugly woman with snakes for hair and a
gaze that could turn onlookers
to stone)was
wrinkled: alliterationvoice
was a dagger:
metaphorjoy of
. . . bad temper:
paradoxvicious
in the name of virtue:
alliteration

Frequently
Lewis uses dialogue to reveal the traits of his
characters. For example,
in the first chapter, he suggests that Babbitt has a
bit of a martyr complex
by having him talk to himself while going through
his morning bathroom
routine:

By
golly, here they go and use up all the towels,
every doggone one of 'em,
and they use 'em and get 'em all wet and sopping,
and never put out a dry
one for me—of course,
I'm the goat!—and
then I want one and—I'm
the only person in
the doggone house that's got the slightest doggone
bit of consideration
for other people and thoughtfulness and consider
there may be others that
may want to use the doggone bathroom after me and
consider—

One fault of
Lewis's style—perhaps
a serious one—is that it tends to "photograph" events
rather than "x-raying"
them. In other words, it describes and narrates
events, often with generous
detail, but typically fails to hint at the causes of
the events. .

.

Climax

The
climax of a novel or another literary work, such
as a short story or a
play, can be defined as (1) the turning point at
which the conflict begins
to resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2)
the final and most exciting
event in a series of events. The climax of Babbitt
occurs, according
to the first definition, when Babbitt
abandons his rebellious ideas
and embraces his old ways. This moment comes when
Vergil Gunch, the coal
dealer, asks invites Babbitt to join the Good
Citizens’ League.
According to the second definition, the climax
occurs when Ted Babbitt
shocks his family with news that he married in
secret but nevertheless
receives his father's imprimatur.

Babbittry
in Modern Society

American
society today—indeed,
every modern society—has its Babbitts. They are men
and women who subjugate
their minds to the collective will in order to gain
favors and form relationships
that will speed their rise in the local power
structure. To think independently—or
to reject accepted practices and traditions—is to
risk losing social standing,
as Babbitt discovered. In Zenith, which is to say
any town or city where
men and women follow the herd, conformity is the
best policy. It puts a
jingle in the pocket and food on the table; it
brings esteem, social acceptance,
and the opportunity to live in a nice home, give
rousing speeches, and
wear a Boosters’ button..